The history of Britain and the aspirations of her Christian communities can be traced in the glorious excesses of the cathedrals.

If the novel has a shortcoming, it's not the glorious excess (there are footnotes on almost every page), but that you probably had to have been in the academy in the 1970's and '80s to appreciate the infatuation with literary "big theory."

As it turned out, "glorious excess" took its toll on Saint Laurent.

The restorers have been unstinting in recreating glorious excess to house the thousands of works of art that remain.

Compared to past show houses, which have run to glorious excess, this year's rooms were quiet and restrained, short on big ideas and chintz, but long on soothe.

The glorious excesses of the cathedrals peaked in the Middle Ages, but the tradition continues to the present day.

Warhol's life is covered less effectively than his times, which are evoked vividly in all their glorious excess, from the Factory and Studio 54 to those Campbell Soup cans and a six-hour film of a man sleeping.

And when the steps are as attractive as those in his new "Center My Heart," this glorious compositional excess is preferable to a predictable tidiness.

IN this age of glorious literary excess, of high conceptualizing and big novelizing, it takes some courage to write a simple love story.

C Map This classy little dive is where the corpus delicti shudders to a halt after a night of glorious excess.